


Animorphs: The Supernatural Chronicles

by Alex Oiknine (alexoiknine)



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canon Compliant, Crossover, Multi, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-04 17:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexoiknine/pseuds/Alex%20Oiknine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once again the Ellimist's arguably most problematic invention, the Time Matrix, is at risk of becoming discovered and manipulated by political forces in a parallel universe. As dictated by the rules of the game he plays with Crayak, an equally-or-more powerful being outside the time-space continuum, the Ellimist cannot go and retrieve the Time Matrix himself.</p><p>The device, which allows one to travel and alter any point in time, is a device powerful enough to create entirely new worlds and dimensions when it falls into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, its amount of power has drawn attention from both angels - who have limited time-travel abilities on their own - and demon, which do not. In either circumstance the Time Matrix would be a disastrous discovery for humans.</p><p>So the Ellimist and Crayak once again have enlisted the service of the Animorphs and Ax for assistance, to go into this new world and recover the Time Matrix. Unfortunately, things get complicated as they run into Dean Winchester, his brother Sam and Castiel. The Animorphs and Team Free Will find themselves having to join together, united by a common goal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be beta-read eventually, but I didn't want the draft to get deleted, so I am posting the rough draft for now over losing my tags.
> 
> If you're unfamiliar to either fandom, don't worry. I'll be editing it to try and make it clearer - plus when Team Free Will encounters the Animorphs for the first time there will be some two-way explaining going on as they get to know each other. The Animorphs plot won't be hugely relevant since they're visiting the Supernatural universe rather than the other way around.
> 
> As usual I don't recommend subscribing while AO3 has the bug where I can't save a draft multiple times since I need to edit frequently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is written with the intention of being comprehensive so that someone not exposed to either fandom can still understand what's going on. It won't take too long if you're not an Animorphs reader or a Supernatural watcher. This story has plans for being beta-read but as noted the AO3 bug has made it problematic for me to avoid posting and I already lost a draft of this once. So I'm posting the first draft. All the normal warnings ("don't subscribe until done") apply as long as this bug isn't fixed.

‹Jake! Look out!› Marco yelled. His gorilla morph had been flayed by a Hork-Bajir and he was beginning to stagger from blood loss. Jake couldn't see much through his remaining eye, but he noticed one of Marco's hands was cupped at his abdomen, trying to hold in his intestines.

He wasn't going to last long.

‹Marco, get out of here. Go demorph. That's an _order_.› Jake took a swipe with his paw at another oncoming Hork-Bajir, narrowly missing its neck and paried a blow from its elbow blade. It was a pointless order - none of them would leave Jake behind under any circumstances, and he knew it. But God, he wished they would.

‹Prince Jake, I have secured an exit. I suggest we retreat as you all have been in morph over one-point-five of your hours,› Ax said calmly. He jumped over the slain Hork-Bajir in front of him, landing daintily on his four hooves and cutting down the Hork-Bajir Jake was trying to get a hold of with the teeth of his Siberian tiger morph. It gave him the chance to start gathering the others and pull them toward the exit. Ax had hacked the system so the Controllers couldn't close the door. Then had removed the panel for good measure. It gave them a good three-to-five minutes. As good an exit as he could have hoped for.

‹Everyone! Get out! Rachel, that means _you_ , too.›

Marco didn't need to be told twice and began knuckle-walking at a calm speed, knocking a few Yeerks down a few pegs on the way out. Cassie caught up to him in a few seconds, limping slightly but well enough to cover his left limb holding his organs. She snarled as the blast of a Dracon weapon grazed her side, but she stayed at Marco's flank.

Rachel hadn't heard, or pretended she hadn't. Her grizzly morph was a tornado of fury, trying to take on four Hork-Bajir at the same time. She had lost a paw and was attacking with one while balancing on the other two, and it was only a matter of time before her exposed abdomen would be her death. Fortunately, Tobias came through where Jake's order would not. Tobias dove at their eyes, then flared his feathers and circled back around to pick at Rachel herself. She roared, belligerent, angry.

‹Rachel. Let's go.›

The two of them moved on while Ax stayed behind, covering Jake's exit. He looked weirdly calm, smacking anyone approaching with his tail-blade.

Erek King - one of their strongest allies passing in the Yeerk movement - had come across some information that Visser Three had been planning a meeting in one of the local businesses they had gained control over. It was a small place, and they had planned this attack carefully. Unfortunately sometimes - and this was one of them - that information was misleading. It had been a trap with a dozen Hork-Bajir, humans, and half as many Taxxons.

Taxxons of course, were mostly just disgusting. Ravenous centipede-looking creatures, Taxxons were so weak that any of their battle morphs could destroy them without so much as a second glance. The scary thing about Taxxons were their ever-lasting hunger and thirst for meat and blood. Not exactly a pleasant end if someone was injured enough to become susceptible to their attacks.

The Hork-Bajir? An entirely different story, with their seven-foot-tall stature and blades from head-to-talon. Sweet by nature, unlike Taxxons. Warrior by Yeerk-infestation and exceedingly dangerous - only outdone by Visser Three himself. Since, like them, Visser Three had the power to morph - and a wide alien arsenal of species to choose from.

‹We were fortunate Visser Three was not present as expected,› Ax observed as they found cover to demoprh. Or, in Ax's case, morph into human form. ‹I believe if he had been present the outcome would have been... Less fortunate.›

Jake felt the pain from his injuries fade as the morphing power healed his injuries. Wounds sealed, healed. His missing eye grew back and his vision cleared. To his side, Marco's intestines schlooped back into his body, growing smaller as he made the transition to human. His breathing became less ragged. On the other hand - like for everyone else - his sense of fatigue increased. Morphing itself took some energy.

Better than the pain and injuries, though.

In less than a minute of noisy, sickening, illogical shifting between the five of them, there were two girls and boys bare-footed and suited in spandex, and a bird of prey lounging in the alley. Tobias hadn't morphed with them - instead, opting to perch at the top of the building and stand guard in case any other Controllers showed up.

Tobias had no need to morph. Red-tailed hawk had become his natural form. He kept look-out for everyone else instead.

Cassie looked over at Jake, hollow-eyed. She hadn't been sleeping well. Not that any of them did anymore - but Cassie had the most responsibilities of them outside of this war, with her father running a rehabilitation center for wildlife from their family farm. They'd go home to do assignments. She'd go home to care for animals and do assignments. And this battle would just add to all of their nightmares, so she could kiss sleep this week good-night, too.

He might have taken her hand, in other circumstances. But Marco was in a hurry to move on and Rachel looked ready to punch something. He could give her a call when he got home, though. Check up on her. "Everyone, let's go home. We'll try to regroup and come up with a new plan tomorrow."

Soon, two peregrine falcons, a bald eagle, and two harriers took off from the alley, Tobias taking off into flight as a red-tailed hawk behind them. The six of them spread over a distance as they flew to avoid attracting attention - birds of prey didn't fly in flocks. They stayed close enough for thought speak, even though no one spoke much. Soon they would be going their separate ways to get home. Cassie, Ax, and Tobias would end up moving one direction while he, Marco, and Rachel went the other way.

No one would talk about the Yeerk invasion, or their very small chances in ever accomplishing victory. How they had lost the battle today and the sheer luck that had let them get away with their lives. The nightmares that would come with ripping Taxxons and Hork-Bajir apart with their bare teeth. But no one was going to talk about the nightmares. They would just go home and try to act like everything was normal around their families.

Well, at least, that's normally how it would have gone. Normally. Jake was thinking up an excuse to go with Cassie - help her with chores, or something - to try and make sure she was okay. Except suddenly no one was flying anymore. Everyone was demorphed and standing in Cassie's barn - or in Tobias' case, perched on a rafter. This wasn't a regular occurrence, but it wasn't the first time either, and Marco was the first to say anything.

There was a brief moment of shock? Like jolting awake from sleep-walking, maybe. Or even just waking up from a nightmare and not realizing for one moment the room you were in. But this wasn't the first time they'd encountered this and it didn't take very long for them to look around expectantly.

"Well, I guess we know what this means," Marco said brightly. "Instant transportation and demorph? Two likely options."

"Ellimist or Crayak," Rachel spat. "So. Where are they?"

He didn't keep them waiting very long, though. The Ellimist stepped into the barn, human-looking but glowing blue. To someone who didn't know what he was, the Ellimist looked mostly like a harmless, middle-aged man. Or maybe like a dead Jedi knight. Unfortunately, they all knew more than that about him. The Ellimist had interfered with them on more than one occasion - it was the only reason Tobias could morph, or why there were any free Hork-Bajir on Earth to begin with.

The Ellimist could easily wipe out not onlly them, if he wanted, but the entire planet. It didn't really help with his whole 'appearing humble' attempts. And this wasn't the first time they'd witnessed his power. The main reassurance they had of his relative safety? That he was engaged with his enemy Crayak in _another_ war.

There was probably some lesson in there about nothing being achieved through politics, but Jake didn't want to think about that.

"It has been a while," said the Ellimist.

"And the last few times you used us worked so well," Marco shot back. "Jake even ending up _dead_ one of those times. Even if we managed to fix it."

The Ellimist smiled. "That is actually why I have come. I presume you recall the Time Matrix?"

"Yeah," Rachel muttered. "How could I forget? I was stuck in a re-education camp."

Cassie shot her a look that quieted her instantly. Rachel had been institutionalized for her non-conformity. But Jake had been an egomaniac and had considered turning Cassie into the authorities for being a radical. And Cassie had owned a slave.

"Okay, it sucked really badly for everyone," Rachel muttered.

The Ellimist smiled. "As you recall, it can create a lot of damage. And unfortunately, it is at risk of becoming uncovered again."

"Isn't there some way to get rid of it for good? Or to get it yourself?"

"As you know Crayak and I have rules of engagement --"

"Okay, fine. But then why not put the stupid thing somewhere where no one will ever be able to get it?"

"The answer remains the same."

Marco looked sour, but Rachel responded. "So, do we have a choice?"

"There is always a choice. You may choose to assist me, or you may choose not to assist me. However, if the matter goes unattended by me Crayak will engage his own forces, likely at the time he sees most fit..."

"And Crayak's a big nasty. We know," Rachel said bitterly.

‹If we go,› Tobias started. ‹If we go, what are we getting into? When is the Time Matrix located?›

"It is located both in a 'where' and 'when,'" the Ellimist said. "I placed it in a parallel universe. I actually placed it far back in time - excuse me, that's irrelevant to you - but not too far in the future it is likely to be recovered by one of two species engaged in a battle on Earth."

"The Andalites and the Yeerks? They come and duke it out here?"

"No, actually. In this reality the battle is between angels and demons."

Seven pairs of eyes  - since Ax had two in his Andalite form - gave the Ellimist a long stare.

‹That's not possible. Angels and demons and all that superstitious crap doesn't exist,› Tobias said bluntly.

"It's a bit more complicated than that," the Ellimist said simply. "But yes, it is true. They are working to start the apocalypse near in the future, and the power of the Time Matrix is... tempting... to these species. If you accept and succeed in the mission, everything will be as before you left. Unfortunately, much like last time..."

"If we die there, we die for good. Great." Marco turned to everyone and held out his hands. "Doesn't anyone else have a problem with this? That we're always the ones doing the Ellimist's dirty work."

Remembering the Ellimist was there, he suddenly looked pale. The Ellimist simply smiled patiently. "No offense."

Cassie shrugged. "We can't let Crayak win, Marco. We _know_ he's bad news."

Jake turned to the Ellimist. "Okay. Okay. We'll--"

But suddenly, they weren't in the barn anymore. Or even in the 1990s anymore.

They were far, far away.


	2. Chapter Two

A very tall young man with green eyes and mid-length brown hair sat at the table of a cheap motel room, engrossed in whatever was playing across his screen. His eyes widened with a deep interest - which his older brother may have noticed, had he not been watching television at the foot of his bed. It wasn't every day that something came along that could shock the Winchesters.

"Hey, Dean, check this out."

Dean looked up, distracted from _Dr. Sexy, MD_. "What's up, Sam?"

"Weird stuff out in California. The Santa Barbara area. Sightings of people who turn into animals, and something... well, something that isn't so animal."

"Skin-walkers or shape-shifters. Kind of a pain to go all the way out to California, though, why not let one of the other hunters get on that one? It's not exactly like we're not busy with some sort of apocalyptic war or anything."

"I don't know, Dean, just take a look at this video."

" _Video?_ " That perked up Dean's interest, and he walked over to get a glimpse. Sam pulled up a YouTube page and hit play. It was a short video of a gross mess of shifting masses. It was nothing like a skin-walker or a shape-shifter whatsoever. The camera's recorder _caught_ the sound of bone grinding, stretching, twisting, bending into something new. He could hear other strange noises that were probably guts re-arranging, or something. It wasn't increidbly loud, but it was happening. The camera wasn't messed up by these things at all - filmed them with no problem, no reflective glare. There was no method to the madness of its shifting, either - legs randomly appearing out of nowhere, fur sprouthing, sometimes even bone would appear before flesh or skin. And at the end there were five people - couldn't have been older than fifteen and... Something else. It looked like a centaur, sort of. Human-like head and torso sitting on top of a deer-like body.

Except it had no mouth, two extra eyes sitting on stalks on top of its head, and a long tail with a scythe-like blade at the end.

" _Holy shit_."

If he'd been almost anyone else - with the exception of other hunters - he was pretty sure he would have lost his stomach at the sight of those shifting masses. Poor, stupid monsters, it probably would be a mercy to kill them. He wondered if they _felt_ that transformation. He didn't normally feel sorry for monsters, but these things looked like kids. Horrific shifting, mutating, melting and reforming kids. Shit.

Sam grinned. "I know, right? You sure you want to leave that to some other hunter?"

" _Holy shit."_

"Should I pack? Or are we forgetting about it?" Sam was just teasing at this point. Dean ignored him.

"Shut up. Let's hop into Baby and let's go. We can probably get over there within three days, if we take shifts."

"It's weird though," Sam pointed out as they got into the car. Sam took the passenger seet, pulling out their father's journal and leafing through it. Dean didn't think they'd find anything there - they would have remembered that. "Normally the smarter monsters like shape-shifters avoid cameras and crap. These monsters are weird - it's almost like they have no awareness of modern technology. I mean, anyone that ever heard of a camera phone wouldn't just change shape in the middle of some alley."

"You think maybe they just don't care?"

"No. I think they honestly didn't _know_. I looked - no newer videos of these sightings. Whatever they are, they learn quickly. But I mean... It's weird they didn't already know. I mean, it's like they just came out of nowhere."

Dean thought, a curious frown coming up on his face. "Well. Every advantage, right? We'll just deal with it when we get there."

He stuck a _Black Sabbath_ cassette into his player and turned up the volume. He couldn't hear Sam when he said, "Yes, technological advantage, that's right" over his music, but he saw the smirk and eye-roll at his cassette player and flipped him the bird. Sam laughed and reclined his chair a bit to settle into some journal-reading.

It didn't take them long to get to the Santa Barbara area between the two of them driving all day long. Eventually they were in another smelly hotel with two full beds. Dean was roaming the city looking for clues, and Sam was looking for stories - anything - on these strange creatures. Which Dean had taken to calling Hortas.

Yeah. Sam was the nerd. Right.

They did find some things - two ghosts and an actual skin-walker - but not a blip on the radar about these new creatures. And the videos had attracted other hunters, too. So if there was anything out there, it was going to be found in a matter of time. The idea of killing something that hadn't been caught before was, well, intriguing.

"Are we sure we need to kill them, even?" Dean asked Sam at one point. "As far as I can tell, these things aren't killing anyone."

But then coincidence fell on their side. Castiel had come in to check on them and they had gone out eating, and harass them about getting back on stopping Lilith and breaking demon seals. This was, after all, basically a break from all that angel-and-demon crap.

No sooner had Castiel looked up and said, "Something's happening" than the three of them jolted and gawked as a wall was torn down by an elephant, followed by a few other missing zoo characters. Tiger. Wolf. Gorilla. Hawk. And the weird blue-and-tan centaur.

Dean may have cussed. Apparently when these guys wanted to breach security, they did so in a _big_ way.

The thing - which the three of them only assumed wasn't a real elephant - was attacking a person with full black eyes.

‹Crap, what the hell are these things?!› the elephant said irritably. They could 'hear' it only in their heads. These things were apparently telepathic. ‹They definitely aren't regular people. Have you seen those eyes? Ugly as heck. And I swear I broke its neck five times already. Think it's a robot? Maybe _Terminator_?›

‹Maybe if I slice it in half,› another one of the things said casually. Dean figured it was the blue thing. It took a swipe at the demon, with the flat of its blade. Apparently these guys weren't actually interested in killing if they could avoid it.

Sam shot Dean a look. Dean looked to Castiel and pulled a gun he'd had in his holster. "Hey, Cas, you mind taking care of that?"

Castiel didn't bother agreeing. He just appeared suddenly before the demon and placed his hand on her. Her eyes went white as they burned out. The dead demon - and the host, too, - collapsed to the ground dead.

Everything in the room stared at him. There seemed to be a private moment in which they all just stared at the new thing before them cautiously. Fearfully.

Then the elephant grabbed Castiel with its trunk and threw him across the room. He looked vaguely irritated as he stood and dusted himself off.

‹Everybody, _run!_ › one of the voiceless voices cried. ‹Let's get out of here! Remember the last one of those things that came after us?›

Well, crap. Dean suddenly realized - this wasn't their first encounter with an angel. In fact, these guys had probably attracted quite a bit of their attention over the last few days. He looked over at him irritably. "Cas, you don't think you could have mentioned this wasn't their first encounter? Or, I don't know, that _maybe their first meeting with your kind hadn't been friendly_?"

Castiel shrugged. "You told me to take care of it, and I was more focused on stopping them from further destroying the local buildings. Though... It does appear I may have done the opposite."

"Wait!" Sam yelled. But it was no use. This was now a stampede, with Dean and Sam chasing - unbelievably - an entire brigade of animals. "Sammy, don't go after these guys without your gun out!"

"What's my gun going to do against a freakin' elephant?"

"I don't know! But it's better than nothing!"

Sam thought he could beg to differ - last thing he needed was a mad elephant, gorilla, _or_ tiger on his tail. But he pulled out his gun anyway.

The animals were faster than them, of course - but Castiel was faster than anything moving in front of them. Even the wolf and centaur-thing. He'd just 'poof' in front of them. This time he placed his hands in front of him, palms out, the universal sign of peace. The centaur-thing skidded to a stop.

"Shit."

Sam saw what Dean was talking about - the thing's eyes on top of the head could move. They turned around to the crowd behind him - the tiger, elephant, and gorilla. The red-tailed hawk settled itself down on a street-lamp. He wondered if they were missing something - the things could talk telepathically - maybe they could speak privately, too?

Not that it mattered to him. He'd seen the video. These things were basically kids. Kids with demons and angels attacking them, apparently, and here he and Dean were sitting with guns prepared for battle. He set his down.

"It's okay. You can come with us. We'll get you to safety."

Dean shot him a look. "What are you doing, promising a stupid thing like that? We don't even know if they're _human_ yet. We haven't done any tests! They want our help, they have to prove themselves."

"Dean, they're like... fifteen, maybe. Just kids. And they're being hunted by demons and angels, so, I'm thinking we assume they're not your average monsters."

‹Hey. We're not monsters.› A different voice this time. Another boy. ‹We're all just human kids. Well. Except Ax. He's an Andalite.›

"An Andalite?"

‹You wanna grill us? We can't stay here. The sirens are almost within earshot. There doesn't seem to be Yeerks here, but there have been plenty of other creepy-crawlies the past few days and I am not waiting to risk any of my team over _your_ problems.›

"Fine. You prove you're human, we go right now."

‹Can't demorph here. Cameras. And Ax really _isn't_ human. He's just not a monster, either.›

"Cas can take care of the camera bit." No sooner had he said it than the electronics on the street suddenly burst.

‹Impressive.› And all of them began to change - including the centaur - Andalite - and the hawk, which flew down to the ground. Soon the three of them were staring at six humans kids. In spandex. Dean quirked an eyebrow.

"We know it looks weird, but we can't morph regular clothes. Still waiting on our superhero uniforms," said one of them. He was short, Hispanic, with hair slightly longer than Sam's. The boy who had been a tiger came up next to him. He was taller, brown hair and eyes.

"My name is Jake. This is Marco," he pointed at the kid now next to him, then to a dark-skinned girl who had just been a wolf, and a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl who had just been an elephant. "They are Cassie and Rachel."

Finally he pointed at what had been a hawk and a centaur - now a dirty-blond boy and a boy that looked to be a strange combination of features between most of them - a more medium-dark skin, somewhat curly hair. "Tobias. He's normally a hawk. And finally Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. We call him 'Ax.'"

"We're the Animorphs," Marco said. Then he looked around. "Not that that matters much here. It's a _long_ story."

Dean frowned and shrugged. "I'm Dean, my brother's Sam, the angel's Cas. Team Free Will. Also a long story. Let's get you out of here. We'll get the details after that."

The sirens were getting really loud. "Cas, can you get all of us back to the motel?"

It wasn't too surprising to him when the kids and Cas were gone. Sam looked around, almost looking disgruntled. Nerd. Probably ticked off he got interrupted from meeting a real alien.

"Hey, glad he left us to get Baby back to the motel."


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've had this in my drafts for a very long time. I'm starting to try to update regularly again. However, on my tablet I can't figure out how to make thought-speak symbols. So this chapter is definitely going to be edited a lot when I have access to a notebook computer again. (Or after I figure out what the shortcut was for those symbols that didn't harm RTF or HTML.)

After Sam and Dean had driven the 1967 Chevy Impala back to the motel, they had performed every test possible to weed out any supernatural possibilities for the kids in front of them. Silver, iron, symbols, salt, holy water, nothing had affected them. They had already affirmed through Castiel that they weren't demons, so that had been easy enough and Dean figured they could gloss over the blood-letting part of ascertaining human identity.

Most interesting, probably, was when Castiel tried touching their souls to see if there was anything unusually involved there. He looked up after touching Jake, wonderingly, and quickly pulled his hand out, taking a step back.

"They don't have souls."

"Hey," Marco protested. "That's not nice."

Castiel gave him a sour look. "I was being honest. Your bodies don't function like human bodies here - your soul, if you have one, is not separate from your physical body. It cannot be used or owned by anyone else. I strongly doubt you _could_ be posessed."

"Soulless?" Dean wondered. "Does that mean they're gonna be like..."

"No. They are not soulless in the same sense of when I removed Sam from Hell. There's nothing _missing._ It is simply not a specific part of their anatomy. Intangible - not just on a human level, but my level as well."

"Then I don't care," Dean said, slouching into a chair. "Story?"

The bigger one - Jake - rubbed a hand through his hair and sighed tiredly. He looked over at Ax. "Do you think telling them will endanger us back... where we're from?"

‹No, Prince Jake, I do not. Even if the Ellimist had not explicitly said we would be returned to when and where we came from, I do not believe the Yeerk threat is a problem here - or that they would come to our planet. And if that did occur a loss of our confidentiality would be the least of our problems, given what we have experienced of these 'angels' since we have arrived.›

"Well then," he sighed and continued. "To make a really long story incredibly short: We're from another dimension. Another reality. In our reality there isn't a war going on between angels and demons. I don't think there's any of that stuff on our Earth, really."

Sam nodded. "We were in a place like that once. It had its up-sides."

Dean grinned. "Like us being rich and not having to gank shit all the time. And being able to kick Zachariah's ass."

"Yeah. Well," Marco said darkly, "Our reality just has war between all sorts of aliens. Lots of fun."

The blonde-haired girl with blue eyes - Rachel - laughed and pushed Marco. Dean had the impression that for her at least there was a lot of fun involved, but he let it go. If it was a problem... Well, that was one of their problems. Unless she was hurting people.

"Yeah," Jake continued. "On our planet, we're dealing with these aliens called Yeerks. They're parasites that take over your mind--"

"Body-snatchers? Like the movie?"

"Yeah, kind of. They take over your mind, enslave you. Their host bodies are called Controllers. People don't even know it's happening, because they simply go back into society, act normal, recruit more people to be Controllers. The Andalites fight them - the war sort of started between Andalites and Yeerks when Andalites tried to help the Yeerks advance technologically? Unfortunately, the Andalites lost the battle at Earth - a surprise attack. Killed pretty much all of them, except Ax. One of them - Ax's brother Elfangor - crashed near us when we were walking home, told us about the war. He had a blue box--"

‹The _Escafil_ device,› Ax supplied helpfully.

"And that gave us the power to turn into any animal we can touch for up to two hours at a time. Before he was killed by the Yeerks."

"And if you don't demorph after two hours?"

Jake gestured at the red-tailed hawk now perched on a shelf. "Like Tobias. Trapped in that form the rest of its natural life. Except we wouldn't be able to morph anymore."

"Why's he so special?"

‹I'm not.›

"That's the next part of our story. Why we're here." Cassie said sadly. "The Yeerks and Andalites aren't the only things at war with each other in the galaxy."

"The Ellimist is what gave Tobias his morphing powers back, and that's why we're here now," Jake muttered. "He's at war with this thing called Crayak."

"What are they?"

"They're both the stuff of your nightmares," Marco laughed. "Two creatures at war with each other, both so powerful they might as well be God. They use all our species as pawns in their eternal chess game. Killing each other straight out wouldn't get either of them what they want. Unfortunately, we seem to be one of the Ellimist's pieces."

"They're the ones that sent us here... To get...." Jake hesitated.

"We need to know they're on our side." Marco jerked his head at Castiel. "And I don't think we can. It's a conflict of interest, for them."

"They already know about it, Marco," Rachel pointed out. "That's what they're fighting about. They just don't know what it is."

"Does it matter?" Cassie wondered. "We need people that understand this world. We exposed ourselves so many times this week. And I think if we trust anyone not to play by the book, it's probably these guys."

Dean grinned. "Now you're just making me blush."

Castiel perked up, tilted his head. "Does this have to do with the time machine?"

Jake hesitated a moment. Then sighed and nodded. "It's called the Time Matrix. It's a simple-looking machine, made by the Ellimist. It can travel anywhere through time or space. We dealt with it once before - a Controller got a hold of it and kept altering reality to try and make it easier for them to take over Earth. We managed to get it back last time. Apparently? They hid it here. We're supposed to be doing reconnaissance before it ends up being used by either of the species at war here."

"Could be useful," Sam said. "If we got a hold of it, maybe we could change things."

"You really don't want to do that," Cassie said. "It wasn't just like a small change here or there. Things were... I mean we were actively committing genocide. Rachel was institutionalized for not being a proper lady or something. Slavery was still perfectly legal in the United States. We ended up in World War II at some point and it wasn't World War II the way it otherwise should have been. You couldn't tell up from down in that reality."

‹And in the hands of angels or demons here, all the more dangerous,› Ax pointed out bluntly.

"For what it's worth," Castiel said, "Angels can already travel through time - though not with the ease of your device. Demons lack it. I could confer with the other angels -"

"Don't," Marco said bluntly. "We've already made enemies of them."

"I think we help them," Sam said. "Cassie and Ax are right. Time travel is always a mess. We can't let the demons get their hands on that. And if it's as powerful as Castiel says-"

"Trust me, it's more powerful"

"-Then we can't trust the angels with it either."

"Yeah, and God knows no one wants to go in the past and get hit on by their own mother," Dean said.

Jake started. "I understood that reference!"

"So, we help you get the Time Egg-"

"Time Matrix"

"-And you get this God-forsaken device the heck off our planet. Truce?"

The Animorphs looked at each other for a moment.

"Deal," Jake said.

 


End file.
